8GB of Storage Required to Play "Halo 4" Multiplayer

A new page on the Xbox website reveals that gamers planning to play Halo 4 will need a LOT of storage to get the game running right.

According to Microsoft, players will need "at least an 8GB USB flash drive or an Xbox 360 hard drive" to play Halo 4 multiplayer. A hard drive is "highly recommended" for players who want the "optimal" experience.

It's unclear exactly how much space Halo 4 will require to even be playable, much less run at top settings, but it's got to be a few Gigabytes if Microsoft is putting out this warning. The page doesn't differentiate between online versus offline play, or between the game's "Spartan Ops" co-op mode and competitive multiplayer.

More importantly, Xbox-owners with a 4GB model console will most likely be forced to pay for some extra storage. That seems like a pretty raw deal, especially for anyone who just signed up for Microsoft's subscription-based hardware plan. You'd think that $15-per-month would be enough to let you play any Xbox 360 game, especially one from a franchise as popular as Halo.